Comic Relief raises £1.75m+ online in six hours

Howard Lake | 18 March 2001 | News

On Friday night Comic Relief raised over £1.75 million in online donations within six hours. This makes it the most successful online fundraising campaign to date, outstripping the success even of the American Red Cross.

On Friday night Comic Relief raised over £1.75 million in online donations within six hours. This makes it the most successful online fundraising campaign to date, outstripping the success even of the American Red Cross.

By 21.40 the online total stood at £195,000, twice as much as had been raised at the equivalent point of the telethon in 1999. By 23.20 the figure had increased to £250,000. At 01.05 Comic Relief announced that “the Comic Relief Web site has taken more donations than ever before in Internet history.” At 01.15 they announced that the site had received £1.75m, adding that “we are absolutely gobsmacked.” By Sunday that figure had increased to £2 million, according to the BBC.

On the night about eight per cent of income was being received via the Web site. This compares to five per cent in 1999. The Web site does of course generate income received via other methods such as the telephone or posted donations.

Other online fundraising activities such as online auctions have also generated further Web-based income for the charity.

The site handled over 85,000 donations processed online on the night, together with over 20 million page views. Throughout the event it was handling 200 donations a minute on average. The surge came between 9.30 and 10.30pm with the site delivering over 50Mbit/second. The crucial time was between 9.58pm and 10.01pm. During this time 14,253 donations were processed, about 60 per second, worth over half a million pounds.

In the week running up to the event the site received over 95 million page requests.

Read Comic Relief set for record at BBC News.

Read UK Fundraising’s hint on 9th March that Comic Relief would raise over £1m online on the night.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.